good morning. coming up on msnbc's "your business," with international orders coming in the owner of a sandals company had to learn the ropes of ordering. and how to doodle your way to your next big idea. that and more coming up next on "your business."

♪ hi, there, everyone. i am jj ramberg. welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to helping your small business grow. it's impossible to plan for everything when you own a company, and not just talking about the bad stuff but good things can happen that throws you off balance as well, and one thrilled to be getting customers from around the world, and he was no expert in exporting so he

needed to learn a whole lot in a short time about the process, and expanding his brand globally was not as difficult as he would have expected. >> i would say the biggest problem in exporting is finding a customer, and fortunately for us, the customers find us. >> ray doesn't need a marketing plan, because he has orders just by word of mouth. >> we have international business from sweden, and france, and hong kong, and taiwan, and korea. >> he says his rope sandals have quite the fan base. >> our product is 100% handmade,

and we take the rope and make it into sandals and we have stores that want to carry the product because they have seen them on feet. >> he eventually bought the company in 2009. >> i discovered it was like a little niche, like a hippie market for the sandals. >> when he was in charge the orders kept coming in, and they got high profile placement which helped him out. >> we have been in "vogue" and "gq" and we have a lot of credibility coming in the gate. >> ray is focusing on exporting to old and new markets and the company ships to two dozen companies and he admits to being pretty nervous at first. >> prior to getting into the export it was like an invisible worry, what are we doing right? what are we doing wrong?

are we going to get in trouble? all those kinds of things. >> but in time fellow intrapreneurs put his mind at ease? >> went to classes and met other people doing exporting and it took some of the stress away. >> working side by side with his daughter-in-law, ashley, the pair manages the global sales, and one thing they discovered immediately was that it's easier to export a product made entirely in the usa, and the paperwork alone was straightforward. >> everything was all right here, and we don't have to claim part of the product came from india or france, and we have one code to worry about, one product, and, you know, no hassles. >> the next step was figuring out how to deliver sandals to customers, and some handle sales from all over the world.

>> you can't ship to individuals sometimes. >> it has all the skills to talk to multiple sources and then they go out and sale multiple products to stores in that country. >> these districters are great resources for avoiding potential pitch falls. >> they will tell us if they had issues with previous companies in the past and what the issues were so they can look for that and we don't have the same issue. >> these outlets can help deal with some of the more tedious work. >> i would say set up an account with ups, fedex, and they do the paperwork for us and quote us duties and taxes and fees ahead of time. >> if an order is big enough, they have negotiated rates to spare some of the expense. >> some of the largest orders are international and they don't want to run out and so forth. >> and sometimes we might cover that, depending on how much they

order. >> while shipping never takes long, making sandals by hand takes time. these early requests work in their favor. >> most of them know our busy season is in the summer months, and they are usually placing their orders and it gives us work in the winter. they do a 50% wire and then before we ship they do the remaining 50% and then we ship it out the door. >> of course, there's always the stress of shipping overseas, and the staff does quality control before sending it on its way. there's a huge difference in the ability to market internationally? >> we never would have been able to handle the travel expenses and costs. >> we had a customer in japan and the state of west virginia

helped to pay for our trip to go there and meet and provided an interpreter and had somebody go out and drum up more business. >> as they look to the future, they are always keeping tabs on which markets are easier to access. >> norway and russia are the hardest two i found to get into, and china and taiwan, places like that, the government is more strict and you have to jump through a few more hoops. they have similar rules when it comes to the government, and taxes aren't too high. >> they both agree questions will inevitably arise, and falling back on representatives will make it a success. >> you contact your rep and they will give you a heads up and know what to look for. >> once you do it once or twice you get the gist of it. lately we noticed a new

trend. somebody on the side of sessions drawing for the audience during the presentation. turns out this is all part of a new movement that uses doodling to help make meetings more productive, and we wanted to know more so we sought out an expert. and the co-founder of image think spends her days doodling and she gets paid for it by big companies, conferences and small businesses across the country, and she figured out a way to use doodles to unlock the creativity of business owners and employees alike, and she said forget brainstorming, but get together as a doodle. >> they retained 30% more than people just sitting there statically. >> she has seen it work.

her brooklyn-based jewelry and accessories companies was doing well but she and her team was so focused on the day-to-day they started to lose sight of the big picture and she brought on norah to help them think through who they were and how to communicate that to customers? >> to have some sort of concrete plan where we would say, okay, this is what we are going to start to communicate to people, and this is how we are going to do it. >> a few hours doodling with norah, and beth was able to come up with a concrete plan. >> let's get your team together and brainstorm about the identity, and i will demonstrate for you so you will be set for the next time you meet. >> sounds good. >> structure it. tip one, assign a note taker. >> you will want to determine at the beginning of the meeting who will be the note taker. >> it's important to remember it's not about how artistic it

is, but really how affective it is. >> tip two, everybody should be able to see what you are drying? >> make sure you have a big white space to work so everybody can see it and you have lots of room for your team's ideas. >> you want to choose the topic of the meeting is, in this case, what makes it great, and you want to talk about your brand, and write largely what the topic is. >> organize containers. >> one tip that is useful once you start capturing the brainstorming session is what we call containers, which is shapes that incapsulates the idea. the first one, a circle or oval, rectangle. a bumpy cloud shape.

a speech bubble. nice. great. you can use these any way you like, whatever one is comfortable for you. >> the team project followed this step by step. >> i would love for you to think makes this job great? >> a lot of travel with this job and ever time somebody travels they bring back something to the table. >> she explained how she used colors and space to bring together the idea. >> three ideas came out of the brainstorming session, and i organized them spaceally. >> you will notice that i use color to organize the theme.

so everything related to inspired by travel can be green and i added some images to the board, and it's something that will add emphasis and bunch. >> and at the end they had a visual of the team's ideas and a way to move forward. >> what do you think? was it effective? >> i think it was, to just clarify the things we think about everything, and i feel like we could put this up on the wall and just, you know, be reminded of the things we want to stay on point with when we are talking to clients. >> do you think you will be able to do it yourself next time? >> i think so. rainn wilson is in the comedy, "the office." he founded the company, sole

pancake. oprah took notice to their creative approach to videos and asked them to produce content for her own channel and they have a youtube channel boasting 1.5 million subscribers. ♪ >> come on in. welcome to sole pancake. >> i started to get well known for being on a certain tv show. hello. and i saw an opportunity, because at that point in time we're talking maybe six years ago, there was not as much positive stuff on the web. it really was a much more negative marketplace. it was the worst of humanity. it was crass. it was pornography and kardashian butts and gossip, and shopping and just kind of -- it didn't make us humans look too good. i wanted to do something

positive on the web. >> this is great. everybody was dancing with each other and it was fun. >> i did an interview with oprah and people were intrigued but skeptical, like how are we going to make money with this, and it's so good for you, and we pivoted a year or two in, and we realized we are not getting the traffic we need, and a lot of questions and ideas that we were exploring online and on the digital space on the website we found we could easily turn into videos and we started to do it on the oprah network, and one that just popped into my head was "pop your problems," where people would write their problems on this giant balloon and altogether it was pop the giant balloon, and it was filled with paper or whatever, and interesting video manifestation

of some of the stuff we were working on, and as we created our youtube channel we found our voice, like let's take these big ideas, the big questions and struggles of being a human being and make videos about them, shareable, short-form digital videos for young people. besides oprah, our kid president was the thing that put us on the map. there's a kid out in tennessee, and his brother-in-law was a film videographer, and the kid was dynamic and the message behind the videos was so inspiring and up lifting. >> mom, the best word in the world. >> and we brought them over to sole pancake and had a

partnership, and we have touched a lot of lives and a lot of souls and the kids are growing up watching kid president videos and teachers and parents share them, and it's something we are super proud of. >> when we started and we pivoted towards inspiring videos we got a lot of condescending pats on the heads like that's so sweet and so nice, and people on the inside going, that's never going to sale. well, it did start to sale. they are not comedy videos or sports videos or music videos, and so in a way we were at the vanguard of discovering this, and people want to share something that moves them and is relevant to them, and kind of continues the human conversation. so we were at the cutting edge

of that. i get stopped a lot for playing dwight on "the office", and i get stopped just as much for creating soul pancake. we wanted to do it as a service, but i also wanted to ride that line of, like, how do we make it a service and profitable because we are not a nonprofit company, and we want to expand and be the king of all media, and we want to be the king of positive content for young people. every time you are choiced with a challenge at work it's best to think creatively about it and the answer may be the easy one but it's not always the best one. and our guest is author of the new book "the language of man:learning to speak creativity." great to see you, larry. >> great to see you, too, jj.

>> this is a way to get people to think creatively, not just in the box. >> yeah, really with intrapreneurs and small business owners it's getting them to go back to thinking creatively. >> because they used to or did when they came up with the idea in the first place. >> it's seeing something possible and an opportunity, and it's the way all small businesses start out and then we get bogged down in the details and forget to pick our head up and look at what is possible around us. >> not just seeing the impossible, i imagine, too? >> that's true. when we get bogged down in the details we see things in the terms of a routine, and the steps we took to work in the past, and when that routine changes it can throw us, so we are thinking about fixing problems rather than creating opportunities. >> you talk about looking adjacent and not just to the moon, what do you mean? >> when we think about creativity, we think about really big ideas and those

happening, we're here today and we have to make a huge moon link to tomorrow, and the big ideas are little ideas connecting together with one another and modifying each other and creating new ideas and think about any small business we know, and they are serving a need, and they are fixing a problem that happened around them. so it's adjacent to them. the things that became their opportunity are right there and not in a far away land. >> and those are the things that grow and then suddenly you reached the moon. >> yeah, if you are looking for those things on a day-to-day bases and if creativity is your habit, you will see those ideas and make them happen. >> you talk about making them a mind-set. how do you do that? >> think about having a mind-set that is an inquiry mined set and this is different than questions, and it could be a powerful tool but it could bog us down. if you are thinking about what

is the possibility in something and what am i not thinking about, that's an enquiring mind-set and that's the best leverage point for starting to think creatively. >> you are still questioning but not questioning specific things but making it an open-ended is there better? is there something we can do differently? >> correct. a customer calls with a complaint and we think about it in terms of what can i do to fix that complaint rather than say what is it they are saying to speak to do things differently to avoid a higher risk? that's the mind set versus the question. >> right. it's a small change. >> exactly. >> co-create, meaning get other people involved. >> think about the stereo type rumor of entrepreneurs. she comes up with the big idea. she starts the company. she keeps the trains running on time. there is lots of people and ideas. the same is true how we think about people as creative.

they are gathering ideas from other people and when they execute to make it real, they need other people to do that. really it's a co-creation in getting employees, partners and customers involved in thinking about that and executing is one of the best ways. >> going back to giving the same mind set. it can't just be you but the culture of your company. >> i wasn't going to go so far as culture, but that's where it will end up. >> this is so great. congratulations on the new book. good to see you, larry. >> good to see you, j.j. time is precious and it seems like there is never enough of it. "yfs magazine" can boost your productivity. one, chrometa tracks your computer time so you can have a log how you spend your day. knowing your break down can help eliminate time waste ers draggi

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if you google it you'll come up with big names like makers row, tommers net and al bly bues aires -- you have to ask yourself do i want to manufacture here domestically or every seas and that's determined by the quality of your product and quantity and cost involved. you may also want to engage a prototype services company before contacting the manufacturer so you're prepared on that front and you may even want to contact agent to visit factories. the point is, do your homework and figure out what works best

for what you want to manufacture and go online and look into online directories and figure out the fit that works for you. we now have the top two tips you need to know to help your small business grow. let's introduce our board of directors and get their advice. jennifer is an attorney and coo and serial entrepreneur owns and runs five businesses in chicago. so good to see both of you. >> great to be here. >> great to be here. >> it's been awhile for both of you. i'm happy to have you both back on the show, jen, you've seen so many businesses grow. you're at a new company now. what tip do you have? >> be smart about privacy. we hear about another company with a data breach ors is num s security numbers stolen. so the first thing is what kind of information are you collecting and how are you collecting it? do you have people coming into

the store and credit card information that may be laying about or e-mail addresses or collecting health data, the kind of data you have you need to be thoughtful. exactly what it is where you're getting it from and what you're doing with it. companies have a privacy policy which a lawyer can help you draft that basically shares with your community your employees and customers how you're using information. >> jay, you're up. >> great. when people start businesses, they are usually focused on growth and profits but it's about cash flow because at the end of the day when you run out of cash and can't pay bills, that's how you go broke there are three things that happen in a business that steal cash. one is inventory. it's very easy when you try to take care of customers to order inventory and over order and unfortunately, in 30 or 60 days when the bills come due you find your payables are out of control. it's important to keep an eye on

levels and discipline yourself to keep the number at some number. tw two, vooreceivables. maybe cod and in some cases like you're doing flooring for houses, you should get a 50% deposit. that could make a huge difference how much cash you have to work with. lastly, when you buy equipment or computers or cars people try to avoid debt so they pay cash and that's a terrible use of cash in a growing business. it's very easy to get a leasing option with to buy or in a car case, your payments are lower. you want to preserve your cash for things like inventory or work in process or hiring new people and if you don't keep an eye, it's easy to get strangled and at the end of the day, maybe you can get a bank to give you a credit line against receivables or inventory but good discipline to watch those things. >> absolutely.

great. thank you so much jay and jen, great advice. this week's selfie comes from nate kalins that runs boss d.j. services. he started in 2004 and been busy with weddings, proms and corporate events ever since. thank you for sending that in nate. we love seeing a photo of your company. pick up your cell phone and take a picture of you and your business and send it to us at your business at msnb cdot comc don't forget the hash tash. if you have any questions about today's show, e-mail us at your business at msn brkmsnbc.c head to our website for open forum and you'll see the segments from today plus a lot more than we posted and don't forget to connect on the digital and social media platforms, as

well. next week, the founder of a small business figures out a way to spend half his time in the office and the other half traveling the world. >> it's a win, win for the company and myself. when i travel we come up with the ideas, the best brainstorming and we're actually most of the stuff gets done. >> sound good to you? we'll tell you why giving potential higher as tryout and letting employees take the lead allows this ceo to work on his business instead of in his business. until then, remember, we make your business our business. will your business be ready when growth presents itself? american express open cards can help you take on a new job,

or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and rvices can help prepare you for growth at open.com. trump in trouble, sinking in the polls and lashing out at gop leaders. >> let me do it by myself. >> are republicans pinning their hopes on george w. bush? also, the fight for gun control after orlando, are we at a turning point? plus our new special services on the injustice of our prison system. >> 22 months, four days, four months and one hour is how much time i did. >> one man's journey from a life sentence to reception. >> i believe in your ability t